New Palestine’s Reagan Kleiman celebrates the final point in a win earlier this season against Connersville.
Tom Russo | Daily Reporter
By Brady Extin | Daily Reporter
NEW PALESTINE — Similarly to its last match against Greenfield-Central, New Palestine took a while to find its groove Wednesday.
The visiting Indianapolis Lutheran Saints gave the Dragons some fits early in the opening set, specifically from their outside hitter positions, before New Pal was able to earn a 3-o victory.
“I think they were tearing us apart on the outside,” New Palestine head coach Kelli Gabehart said. “Their two outsides were very good.”
Down 9-15, it was a timeout by Gabehart that sparked the team to life.
“We were not blocking well at all, so we started to enforce the blocking over here, and changed our mindset from the service line after the timeout,” Gabehart said. “The serving and the blocking were what helped us to come back in that first set.”
Following the timeout, the Dragons went on a run fueled by three kills from sophomore Lauren Wilson, and eventually found themselves tied at 16 before a Lutheran timeout of their own.
The Saints timeout had the same effect as New Palestine’s did earlier in the set and propelled them to a 20-17 lead.
This time it was senior Reagan Kleiman’s turn to bring the Dragons back. After a kill from fellow senior Isabella Gizzi, Kleiman reeled off three consecutive kills to give New Palestine the lead 21-20.
From there the two teams traded points until a kill from Wilson and then a violation from Lutheran sealed the set.
After the back-and-forth first set, the Dragons returned to their normal form taking sets two and three easily to win the match by set scores of 27-25, 25-9 and 25-18.
With the straight set win, New Palestine has played five straight matches without losing a set.
The difference, in those last two sets for Gabehart, was the team’s serving.
“I told them every single time from the service line that we need to serve tough.” Gabehart said. “I think that was definitely a game-changer in the last two sets.”
A big reason for that was freshman Azure Flagle, who maintained serve for eight consecutive points early in the second set, including three aces. She added another ace in the third set to finish with four on the night.
Gabehart stressing to her team the importance of improving at the service line wasn’t just for this match — it’s something that she’s wanted to see happen all season long. According to her, the girls finally responded.
“They turned a page (Wednesday) on their serving,” Gabehart said. “Our serving has been average all season long, but tonight it was way better than average, so I’m hoping that will continue into conference play.”
The Dragons haven’t been tested since the third match of the season when they lost 3-0 to Class 4A No. 1 Hamilton Southeastern, but Gabehart doesn’t expect that to last much longer with the bulk of conference play coming up.
“I’m liking how we are responding and connecting right now,” Gabehart said. “But it’s going to get a lot tougher.”
